If Google is demoting pirate sites, why is “mp3skull” still a top result?

RIAA says Google's new policy isn't having any noticeable effect.

When we Google "carly rae jepsen call me maybe mp3," the top hit is a site called mp3skull.com, which provides several links to copies of Jepsen's catchy pop song for download. And that, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) argues in a new report, is a big problem.

Last summer, Google announced that it would add a new criteria to its search rankings: the number of takedown requests. The more takedown requests a site has, the lower it would be in the rankings.

At least that was the idea. But the RIAA's research suggests that the new policy hasn't had any detectable effect on the rankings of major pirate sites. The RIAA has been tracking the rankings of pirate sites in Google search results for queries like "rihanna diamonds download" and "kesha die young mp3," and it has found that the sites with the most takedown notices have continued to consistently appear on the first page of results. Indeed, they were more likely to appear than links to legitimate music-purchase sites such as iTunes or Amazon.

Because Google publishes statistics on takedown requests, the trade group was able to determine which sites are targeted most frequently. mp3skull, for example, has been the target of 153,326 takedown requests between August and December of last year. Another site called downloads.nl has received a whopping 433,342 takedown requests.

Yet the RIAA's statistics suggest that if Google is taking takedowns into account in its search results, it's not having much effect:

To be clear, the law doesn't require Google to demote pirate sites in its rankings. As long as Google complies with the DMCA's notice-and-takedown regime, it's in the clear legally. The decision to demote pirate sites was Google's effort to go beyond the letter of the law in order to address the concerns of major copyright holders.

Still, Google did promise to demote pirate sites in its rankings last summer. And the RIAA's data suggests that the search giant hasn't done much to deliver on that promise.

Update: A Google spokeswoman responds: "We have invested heavily in copyright tools for content owners and process takedown notices faster than ever. In the last month we received more than 14 million copyright removal requests for Google Search, quickly removing more than 97% from search results. In addition, Google’s growing partnerships and distribution deals with the content industry benefit both creators and users, and generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry each year."

Are sales of this song lacking? Does the RIAA or anyone believe that any and all pirating will ever be solved? Why the hell are we still acting like there is some magic pirate button that will erase any and all illegal downloading site?

If the RIAA spent half as much time putting their efforts into new ways for people to hear their crappy music as they do with these idiotic lawsuits, chances are good that their music sales would be even higher.

The issue here is there is simply no alternative site to show. iTunes is used primarily as separate application and do they even serve up mp3s? Amazon i'm not so sure about, but maybe its just a metadata thing. Just because the site was demoted, it is not impossible that it is simply so popular that it is still on top even with the demotion. I mean Google is more or less a website popularity contest, but if the RIAA doesn't have a a player in the contest how do they expect to win? They aren't selling what people are looking for is all.

My guess is that Google has added a step to its ranking algorithm that incorporates takedown requests into it.

Since it's obvious that not all takedown requests are legitimate (Who remembers NASA's videos getting taken down by some tiny station?), the algorithm can't just do something like setting ranking to zero if there's X requests. (The moment this became public, someone would make a takedown request bot to sink targeted sites to the bottom anyways - people are always trying to manipulate Google's algorithm.) Since removing something entirely makes the inevitable false positives unacceptable, this doesn't make sense for their implementation (though it certainly seems this is what the RIAA expects).

Thus, I conclude that the number of takedown requests (and possibly metadata on said requests) is merely one factor in the ranking, and only weighs down the site, instead of purging it.

As such, a sufficiently popular/highly ranked site will still be high in the rankings even with tons of takedown requests, because the other factors are high enough to keep it there.

As an aside - Wikipedia is almost always one of the top results for broad queries on a subject. How many takedown requests do you think they get? (Again, keeping in mind the number of absurd takedown requests that occur commonly; though Wikipedia is very good about tracking the exact copyrights on its media, I can't imagine they don't get frivolous requests at all)

To be honest, I have a hard time swallowing any data the RIAA provides.

I also have a problem with them thinking and Google agreeing that the number of take down requests is a good filtering criterea since there is nothing in place to stop the RIAA (or anyone) from simply filing take down requests for no reason other than to affect a site's place on a search list.

Why is Google going "beyond the letter of the law in order to address the concerns of major copyright holders"? What about "minor" copyright holders? Is Google trying to edge (further) into the business of picking winners on the internet?

It would seem like there is a strong case for a neutral, uncensored information source in this world, to enable individuals to access to the content needed to make good decisions. Any policy that a company like Google decides arbitrarily to employ in response to governments (see their China policy) or corporations starts the slow slide down the slippery slope towards a lack of true freedom.

1a: If Google promotes trusted sites, what's the most trusted site it knows? Google Play. If it promotes Google Play, they just look worse in any future cases where "abusing their monopoly" is the accusation.1b: If Google promotes other sites aside from their own, they are only granting a (free) service to their competitors and weakening their own product just to attempt to show goodwill.2: If Google waves a hand at the RIAA, the scumbags will clamp down like rabid bulldogs and never let go. It'll earn them no favors in any future copyright infringement cases as they'll be held up as an example of copyright accomplices.

I think Google made a really stupid move making any form of promise to the RIAA.

Google really is lowering MP3 sites in their search results, but the publishing of their DCMA takedown requests is popular on the internet and many sites link to these results thus fooling Google's algorithm into raising the popularity/relevance of these sites and cancelling out their attempts to try and demote them.

Do people really use Google to find a good "pirate" site? Most sites I'm aware of i learned of from word of mouth.

Sometimes Google is the only hope if you're searching for a single unpopular, obscure song that wouldn't be on torrent trackers, popular pirate sites, heck not even available at record stores/legal options.

Google really is lowering MP3 sites in their search results, but the publishing of their DCMA takedown requests is popular on the internet and many sites link to these results thus fooling Google's algorithm into raising the popularity/relevance of these sites and cancelling out their attempts to try and demote them.

How is it that you can get your balls busted simply for documenting the Internet exactly as it stands? Sure, there are going to be bad guys doing bad things out there, but why is it Google's responsibility to censor the searches it provides? I want Google to show me what their algorithm things is most relevant to my search terms, not what their algorithm thinks plus or minus a few courtesy of the RIAA.

The RIAA and any lawmakers trying to enforce this get a D- for their efforts. Their tiny pea brains were actually able to realize that illegal content will be harder to find if it doesn't come up on search engines, but they massively failed by not realizing that people can still create forum sites, dedicated search engine sites, and other online meeting places to distribute the links that get removed from Google. It's never been easier to set up your own web server, create your own forum about anything and let it do its own thing. Add in cloud services that allow you to spin up a web server in a matter of minutes, and the whole idea of hiding the content instead of getting rid of it seems utterly insignificant.

Do people really use Google to find a good "pirate" site? Most sites I'm aware of i learned of from word of mouth.

Sometimes Google is the only hope if you're searching for a single unpopular, obscure song that wouldn't be on torrent trackers, popular pirate sites, heck not even available at record stores/legal options.

One thing I don't understand about the RIAA argument is that who cares if a site is on the first page. If I am going to go through the trouble of getting something from an unauthorized source, I'm willing to go to page 10 or 20. If I wanted easy I'd go to Amazon or Google Play (assuming the item is in there). This sounds like step one of a series of steps to get these sites off the net entirely. And, while I buy 99.99% of my music legally - sometimes music isn't available in my region for purchase and I don't want to pay money conversion fees for a song.

My guess is ITunes would be the top site for all searches if it wasn't for the fact any actual link to an artist is usually greeted by a page to Download ITunes software instead.

True.If we were to use a car analogy (as they are the favorites here) most other softwares run like a V8 or a V12 engine on Windows while iTunes (on Windows) runs like a cow with it's hind legs cut off

One thing I don't understand about the RIAA argument is that who cares if a site is on the first page. If I am going to go through the trouble of getting something from an unauthorized source, I'm willing to go to page 10 or 20.

They are not targeting people like you but more like the "casual downloader" who is not as committed to finding the song.. ***PLUS***, they want to game the system and get free advertising on Google.

Being the scumbags that they are, they dont want to pay to get their "legit sites" on the first page but they still want to make money when these "legit sites" sell music, rather than tell Google "hey, take out all those other, better sites, and put our shit up there... and for free, because thats how we roll" they are going the round about, scumbag, bastardy, douchey way of saying the same thing using different words.

I think the problem is the search term mp3. Adding that to the end of a query seems to bring up the pirate site, which makes sense because who else beside pirates would advertise MP3's of copy written music?

Google is working correctly RIAA just doesn't understand the algorithm. Now if they want Google to ignore the search term "mp3" they may have more RIAA friendly results, but that would also block legitimate searches.

I think if RIAA wants more from Google then they should be the one's paying for it.

It may also be partly the fact that people often don't use a Google search to find a song on the legitimate sites. I just go directly to eMusic or Amazon to buy music, no Google involved. It's only if I can't find the music on one of those sites that I might turn to Google. Often, the music is available directly from the band's web site, but that can be a bit irritating if you have to set up a new account to buy it.

Are sales of this song lacking? Does the RIAA or anyone believe that any and all pirating will ever be solved? Why the hell are we still acting like there is some magic pirate button that will erase any and all illegal downloading site?

If the RIAA spent half as much time putting their efforts into new ways for people to hear their crappy music as they do with these idiotic lawsuits, chances are good that their music sales would be even higher.

Ive said it before and Ill say it again, the RIAA has no interest whatsoever in eliminating piracy. If piracy goes bye bye, so does much of their business. They are not content creators, they are lawyers. Lawyers make money by litigating etc.

It'd be nice if the RIAA or whoever focused on providing a better service instead of spending all this time and money playing whack-a-mole.

I think the RIAA's perspective is that they'll obviously never be able to compete with every piece of music ever made available for free with near instant download, so why bother? Apple is a good example of why you should bother IMHO, but the RIAA doesn't seem interested in their example.

I do wonder if there is a noticeable difference in piracy rate between music that is available on Amazon, Apple, etc... versus music that is not?

Piracy rate can be a little difficult to determine though. Some people just like to horde things and will download stuff just to have it, even if they aren't all that interested in using it. This inflates the "number of times item X has been downloaded" statistics without really providing a good picture of how many of those downloaders would have bought the items legitimately if the piracy option were not available.

I also have a tough time giving people grief if they're downloading old out of print material that is not available on normal digital stores. If the companies are going to insist on not serving their market, why complain if they work up their own solutions?

Google agreed to consider it as a factor. If other factors are swamping out its significance, then it will not have much noticeable effect even if it is being properly calculated in. These statistics, without more, do nothing to show that Google is not fully living up to its promise.

You report a link, they take it down. Automated takedowns are not good. There should always be a human reporting it and checking it.Google does automated takedowns on Youtube for GEMA (German music mob), and they recently blocked one of those meteorite movies because it has some music coming from the car radio. I mean, seriously?

Let me quickly organize a meteorite to fly over Russia so I can listen to some songs coming from car cams.

What the RIAA is doing is akin to trying to kill all of the spiders in the world with a shoe. They might get tiny little victories here and there, but they will never truly be successful. I can only hope that someday they'll realize that that business model is extremely inefficient and only results in wave upon wave of bad press. For every person they scare out of downloading with exorbitant fines, there will be 10^10 more piss-poor teenagers who want to get the latest pop songs on the iPod they got for their birthday.

What the RIAA is doing is akin to trying to kill all of the spiders in the world with a shoe. They might get tiny little victories here and there, but they will never truly be successful. I can only hope that someday they'll realize that that business model is extremely inefficient and only results in wave upon wave of bad press. For every person they scare out of downloading with exorbitant fines, there will be 10^10 more piss-poor teenagers who want to get the latest pop songs on the iPod they got for their birthday.

They're fighting a losing battle.

If only they could take this attitude out on those wretched stinkbugs. In fact, I'm going to mail a pair of shoes to RIAA right now!

The only real distinguishing difference in the search (obviously) is the mp3 search key and all that means is the download sites, because of the way they're keyed for keywords, are apparently doing a better job of getting ranked for music files than any of the other sites - INCLUDING youtube.

As previously mentioned, I guess it would be a potential conflict of interest to have google simply rewrite their algorithm to promote their own links above the other download sites, and I'm sure that if they did that the RIAA would be screaming bloody murder because their preferred method of getting money out of the average netizen is not being equally promoted.

Truth be told, I'm not sure you're going to be able to make them happy without completely compromising the integrity of any search algorithm, so someone should just tell them to STFU.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.